Deep Throat

Great White Sharks. Big scary bastards. Damn near evolutionary perfection, top of the food chain, over a tonne of muscle and teeth. Speaking from an anthropological point of view: you wouldn't fuck with a Great White Shark. 

Fossils of Great White Sharks have been dated back 16 million years, these incredible beasts 'found themselves' some 9 - 11 million years before humans separated themselves out from chimps. Very little has changed since these fossils were alive and why would it? 

The appropriate phrase to describe a Great White is 'Apex Predator'. When I hear any animal falls into this category for real I know I'm going to enjoy learning about it. If you can imagine all the animals in a certain environment, in this case the sea, in a triangle sitting just above their food then the Great White would be right at the top. In some cases an animal can be an Apex Predator due to the absence of other animals. For example: If you were at London Aquarium looking at a tank with a large number of tropical fish and a seal or two, (unlikely I know but this is hypothetical) the seals are the Apex Predator. They are the Apex Predator because there is no bloody Great White Shark in the tank. Bang Jaws in there and the seals crap themselves, Apex Predators my arse! Get out seals! Great Whites are Apex Predators, make no mistake.

Something just touched my leg......

Great Whites get there name from their white underbellies, but have a grey dorsal area, this is a physical attribute known as 'countershading'. This is hugely beneficial to their hunting capabilities. The sharks generally hunt their prey from below. Having a grey dorsal area makes them tricky for their prey to spot from above and the lighter colours on underneath equally make it harder to spot from below, a very basic but ultimately very effective method of camouflage. 

Great Whites hunt by swimming along the sea bed looking for their prey above them. They're not particularly delicate eaters, engaging their full muscle ridden torpedo shaped bodies they will swim at full speed, up to 43mph, towards their target ramming them and taking the first chunk out of them to injure and incapacitate. After their prey has bled to death the shark will rip off chunks with their rows and rows of teeth and swallow them whole. No chewing. If a tooth gets broken, falls out, gets spinach stuck in it there will always be a tooth behind it to become the replacement, Great Whites can have up to 3000 at any one point, like a conveyor belt of serrated daggers.

Nom nom nom

The first bite also acts as a test bite; Great Whites aren't especially fussy eaters but it seem that they don't like the taste of some flesh. This has been something of a relief to surfers worldwide. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History there have been 2320 shark attacks on humans since 1580, this number is not just for Great Whites either, this is all sharks. It seems that Great Whites will use their torpedo attack or their teeth to investigate an object in their surroundings. Seems like a win-win for the sharks to me, have a taste, if she likes it: chow down. If she doesn't, at least the object's not fighting back. "Clever Girl".

One of the things that makes Great Whites such extraordinary hunters is their sense of perception. They are able to detect the electromagnetic field emitted by the movement of all living organisms. This is done by the 'Ampullae of Lorenzini', sensing organs found in most sharks and rays. Great Whites can detect half a billionth of a volt. To put that in some kind of context: Imagine if you will that you are in London, you're standing on one end of a very flat runway that flouts the rules of physics and doesn't follow the curvature of the Earth. Imagine then that your friend, your buddy, your pal is standing at the other end of this runway in Rome, roughly 1000 miles away. Your friend is flashing a torch powered by AA batteries. You can't see that flashing, your eyesight is not good enough. However, if you were a shark, and the 1000 mile runway was converted into a cubed area of the sea, and London & Rome were in fact under the ocean,and your buddy was a fish and the torch was your buddy's heartbeat and you, as a shark, were hungry but your buddy was hiding from you it wouldn't matter. You would find and eat your friend in one of his measly AA powered heartbeats. 

Ok, that was quite a complicated example but I'm sure you get the idea. 

Great Whites have been known to show problem solving capabilities and are therefore put in the higher echelons of animal intelligence. A report on one of the few fatal attacks on a human showed that the shark and positioned itself between would-be rescuers and the object of it's attack, possibly as a way of defending it's prize. When testing a prototype of an electronic shark repellent in South Africa, a researcher noted that within a few hours, all the White Sharks lured to the area with bait became very wary of the research vessel, offered baits and the researcher, having apparently learned that - in that particular context, at least - these formerly familiar objects often carried an unpleasant electric field.

There have been two documented incidents involving 'Orcas' attacking Great Whites. I realise this undermines my previous point about Apex's and seals but if you fancy messing with a Great White after reading the following then be my guest (law suits not expected). The first was in 1997 when an Orca held a Great White upside down to induce 'tonic immobility' and then proceeded to eat the shark's liver once it had died. A similar thing happened in 2000. The fascinating thing is that after the two incidents the surrounding populous of about 100 Great Whites vanished completely, possibly to escape further attacks. I have no doubt that a few Great Whites could take on a single Orca and win but they're clearly not the ferocious, all-attacking, death machines they're made out to be. I blame it on Peter Benchley, Steven Spielberg and this ridiculous charade:

Survival of the Fittest?

I bloody hate Cockroaches. I tense up when I see them on TV, I shriek like a little girl if I see one in real life, I even started vomiting when a "friend" threw one at me in Florida once. I have Katsaridaphobia. Phobias are usually triggered by an event that stores a little piece of information in the brain's hippocampus that is filed away under 'DANGER'. Thus when the situation is encountered again the 'DANGER' file pops open and invokes the fight or flight mechanism, in most phobic situations it will be flight. I realise cockroaches pose very little danger to me but I'm still terrified of them

I remember the event that caused my phobia. I was reading Better Than Life by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor, in the book it was a massive amount of time in the future and Planet Earth was ruled by 'eight foot long cockroaches'. I only had a sneaking suspicion at that point that cockroaches would one day inherit the earth but after reading BTL it was confirmed and my phobia was properly realised. Cockroaches will eventually take over the planet, they have to, it's only matter of time because they've been trying so damn hard, they'll work it out eventually, evolutionary theories suggest in their favour. They're just biding their time. This is in my favour though, I will be long gone by the time it happens. Cockroaches don't have very good memories and they always turn right, both factors equal a very slow evolutionary progression surely. A bunch of bored and over-funded scientists experimenting on cockroaches in their lab of insect torture discovered that its very hard to condition cockroaches. If a cockroach in a Y-shaped tube turn right at a crossroads one of the little blighters antenna's got snipped off and back to the start of the maze it went. 57% of the antenna-less cockroaches turned right again. The scientists, showing their humane side left the remaining antenna intact.

Cockroach fossils have been found from 354–295 million ago. They survived whatever it was that killed the dinosaurs. I thought dinosaurs were hard bastards but they've been shown up by this little shit. They have some amazing survival traits but probably wouldn't, as is popularly believed, survive a nuclear war. They certainly wouldn't survive a nuclear explosion, they'd be vaporized like everything else. It's true that cockroaches do have a much higher tolerance to radiation than humans. They can take up to 15 times the amount of radiation that would kill a human. 

I don't believe that nuclear armageddon will be the end for us and it certainly won't be the reason cockroaches will take charge. A cockroach can survive without food for a month. The mythbusters failed in their attempt to drown cockroaches: I know that wasn't the premise of the experiment but I hate them, the little arses. 

However, the most (I've gotta give it to them) impressive survival capability of the cockroach is their uncanny ability to survive having been decapitated for up to three weeks. Cockroaches have a much much lower blood pressure than humans do.The sliced surface would clot rapidly leaving no time for uncontrolled bleeding. You may ask "How can the wee fucker survive without its brain?". Well, the cockroach's respiratory system is made up of spiracles rather than a nose or mouth for inhaling/exhaling. The spiracles pipe air directly to the tissue through a set of tubes call tracheae. The brain does not control these and the blood does not carry oxygen around the body. "But still, it's not living so to speak...?". As with most insects, cockroaches have nerve tissue agglomerations, or ganglia, in each segment of the body. Again, these are not controlled by the brain so a cockroach with no head can still manage very simple physical functions, standing, reacting to touch and movement.

Sickeningly a cockroach head that has been removed from its body can survive for several hours until it runs out of steam. Experiments have been conducted showing that if given nutrients and is refrigerated the roach head can last even longer. Like a sick little tamogotchi.

If you want to rid yourself of a cockroach you can't drown it, you can't expose it to radiation, you can't starve it, you can't chop it's head off. Stamp on it. Stamp on it good. Scrape it up of the floor, gather the resulting substance into a pile, fold it into some paper, stamp on it again, fry it, blend it, bin it, empty the bin, put in compactor, crush the compactor, bury compactor, blow up the planet.

For a long time I thought that cockroaches were the hardiest species on the planet. That is until I learnt of the cute sounding Water Bear.

Yeah, that picture is not a picture of a Water Bear.

The Water Bear or Moss Piglet is not cute. It actually looks fairly disgusting. You're unlikely to have ever seen one though as the biggest Water Bear probably wouldn't grow over 1.2mm. Newly hatched larvae could be smaller than 0.05mm.

Tardus - Slow. Gradu - Step. Tardigrades or Slow Walkers might well have had their name taken from Dr Who's TARDIS.Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. Tardigrades have an astonishing ability to suspend themselves in any given moment only to reanimate at a later, some times at a much much later point in time. This process is called Cryptobiosis. The Tardigrades metabolism drops to less than 0.01% of normal and their water content to roughly 1% of normal. The water is replaced by a type of sugar called Trehalose. This sugar is also found in sea-monkeys. 

Tardigrades effectively dry themselves out in a process called desiccation and it is just about the most fail safe defence mechanism imaginable. The Tardigrade will do this to itself when it's environment becomes inhabitable and can longer provide for it's needs. Very little can affect the Tardigrade when it is in this state. One deep sea species can survive 6000 atmospheres of pressure. 10 metres under the sea exerts about 2 atmospheres of pressure. A Tardigrade can survive for a couple of minutes at -272°C which is basically absolute zero. They can go the other way too, surviving temperatures of 151°C. Like the cockroach they can survive blasts of radiation. Only they do it much better than a cockroach. They can survive 5000Gy (gamma rays). 5-10Gy would kill a human. They can survive droughts with ease, 120 year old Tardigrades have been found in their suspended state. 

 In 2008 a group of European scientists exposed two species of Tardigrades to the vacuum and had radiation of space. They survived the vacuum and low temperatures easily, and even laid fertile eggs afterwards, but exposure to the full intensity of the sun's ultra-violet radiation caused them problems and survival rates were then much lower. But still, a handful survived the full frickin' force of the sun's power! All that it takes to bring these lil buggers back to life is a drop of water and they'll be on their way.

I'm not afraid of Water Bears though. I probably would be if they were eight foot long but I'm so totally full of admiration for the way that they exist. They will be on this planet long after humans have wrecked it all or humans can no longer exist under the expanding sun. I have got absolutely no idea how you could rid yourself of a Tardigrade if you found yourself in a situation where you wanted to. I'd hazard a guess that you'd have to take him by surprise attack with a flat swatting weapon because once he dessicates he's there for a while.

That's frickin awesome!!

I broke my collarbone recently, medically speaking a broken bone is called a fracture still but I saw the x-ray, it's definitely broken. I also fractured my kneecap in the same accident but the collarbone was the painful one. While I was sat at home for just over three weeks I spent a long time thinking about how different the accident could have been; what if I hit the taxi at a different angle? What if the door that opened had opened a fraction of a second later? In amongst all the morbid thoughts was a deeper and more profound thought: THE HUMAN BODY IS FRICKIN AWESOME!!

See, anyone who came to visit me would have seen me sat on my sofa, drinking coffee and watching TV. Outwardly that is exactly what I was doing but on the inside, completely independently of any conscious thought, my body was mending itself. I'm sure there are plenty of people that could explain to me exactly what was going on physiologically but I'm not that interested. I prefer to think that there are lots of little workmen repairing the damage done. Obviously this is not the case but it doesn't matter, the endlessly complex goings on within my right shoulder are fully automated, my body is just getting on with restoring the full physical capability to my arm, hopefully exactly as it was before. To me this is absolutely incredible, and I defy anyone else who actually thinks about it to disagree with me. 

Scientists estimate that 'humans' branched off from chimps in the evolutionary tree approximately 5-7 million years ago, so assuming Mr Darwin and these scientists are correct we, as a species, have had a fair amount of time to get good at this sort of thing. Most of us have distinguished ourselves from chimps quite successfully but there are a few lagging behind.

Too obvious?!

My accident was the kick start I needed to get on and begin writing this blog. I will be writing about all the FRICKIN AWESOME!! things about life on Planet Earth I know or learn about. 

So to begin with: The Magicicada. Already you're thinking this is gonna be good. I know you are! The clue is in the name MAGICicada. I first learned about this amazing little insect in a David Attenborough documentary about 5 years ago, before this I had no great respect for insects but this one changed it all. They're from the northern and eastern states of the USA and they truly blew my mind when I first learned about them. 

There are 7 known species of the Magicicada, 3 of these species have a life cycle of 17 years and the other 4 have a life cycle of 13 years. The interesting thing about them is that all but approximately 1 week of their life cycle is spent underground before emerging to mate. What's even more interesting is that every specimen within the localised population of each species is developmentally synchronised. This means that they all emerge to mate at the same time, one week before the end of their 13 or 17 year life cycle, having spent the other 12 or 16 years and 51 weeks snuggling up together underground in preparation for what must be the biggest orgy in nature. Just think of the anticipation that must have built up in their little insect minds!! Numbers of Magicicadas in an emergence, or Brood, have been recorded in excess of 1.5 million per acre! That's a lot of insect nookie.

The Magicicada on a warm spring evening will crawl out from the ground and sit on nearby vegetation (if it can find space!) until final transformation into adulthood is complete. Once a fully grown adult their EXOSKELETON will harden and the mating can begin.

The suggested reason for the Magicicada's evolutionary path is twofold. The first being a survival technique known as PREDATOR SATIATION. While the Magicicada's exoskeleton is hardening they are easy prey, so the sheer numbers of them will ensure that no predator could ever consume them all, thus ensuring all the insect sex (insex?!) can happen and their species continues to survive. 

The second reason is what tops this insect off for me as one of the most FRICKIN AWESOME!! things I have ever heard about. In an amazing link to other forms of life on the planet; David Attenborough explained to me that the mulch that results from millions upon millions of rotting Magicicadas provided the perfect fertiliser for the surrounding forest's growth. This is the really incredible bit: records show that in the year prior to the Brood's emergance that tree growth in the forest has declined significantly due to the lil buggers in the ground munching on all their roots. So the Magicicadas gorge on the tree roots for a years, killing the trees a little, have a massive week long party then die and in doing so make up for the damage they caused. So in effect the Magicicadas exist to further the growth of the trees, the trees exist to further the capability of the Magicicada to breed. Which begs the age old question: What came first? The Tree or the Magicicada? Elton John called this sort of thing The Circle of Life.

I find it truly amazing that Planet Earth and all it's inhabitants are so inextricably linked in the evolutionary chain, making that scene in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum's character explains to the dozy scientist that it doesn't matter that all the dinosaurs "born" in Jurassic Park are female one of the most profound moments of cinema I have ever witnessed. Thank you Jeff. You and the Magicicadas are truly FRICKIN AWESOME!!


On another note.....

A friend gave me a CD this week. It's a chap called Marcus Bonfanti and I've really been enjoying it. It seems like a nice blend of Seasick Steve, Tom Waits and Chris Rea (remember him?!). I urge you all to check him out here. I've also been listening to a great deal of the fantastic The Idol Rich who have a sure-to-be-bloody-brilliant album coming out soon.